Henry William Wilberforce

“ If the promise went no farther than this world, it would but offer us one hundredfold for what we give to God; but let us lift up our eyes and our hearts, and strive to take in something of the infinite and eternal reward in heaven, of which the earthly promise is but the type and shadow. And this is pledged to us in the word of God not once or twice, but repeatedly, and with an overflowing variety of language and figure. It is not one hundredfold, but as far beyond all earthly proportion, as the ages of eternity exceed the span of our mortal life. ”

“ Yet the active part of a Christian life is not less dangerous, if we neglect to feed the flame of devotion, by frequent retirement into the immediate presence of our God and Saviour. The society and the praise of men may tempt us to compare ourselves with others, and to regard with complacency our offerings to the service of God; but vanity, which shoots up with a rapid growth in the glare and sunshine of the world, is checked and blighted by the still shade of retirement and solitude. ”

“ Nor need we be very rich to do something effectual. Whoever has an income of one thousand pounds, would be able, in many parts of the country, by saving only the tenth of it for seven or eight years, to build a church for five or six hundred worshippers, on a most respectable scale, and without any aid, beyond that which our societies are always ready to give wherever it is needed. Let him ask himself whether in those last gone by, he has enjoyed as much happiness (to leave the promised blessing for a moment out of our view) as the tenth thus expended would have procured for him? ”

“ The first question of a scrupulous mind, when it grasps the full magnitude of this thought, is, whether we are justified in using any property for ourselves, in having greater comforts than the poor around us, better houses, better clothing, better food, than the poor members of Christ's body who are the objects of our charity. For if we hold all that we have in trust, for our Lord, for them, and for ourselves, are we at liberty to spend more in providing for our own wants than for those of any other individual? ”

“ Let us look through our own favoured land, and where does the eye not meet the parish church, and all the blessed associations which float around it? And once these were not. Even if it should be thought that we still need as many churches as already exist; the demand is only, that in an age of unexampled wealth and luxury, men should give to God as their fathers did out of their poverty. Let us then take courage by the past, and address ourselves to our own portion of the work; thankful that God has accounted us, as well as them, worthy to be partakers of its blessedness. ”

“ And here again we see how unchristian are our schemes when we would provide for the service of God now by overthrowing that which our fathers have built up for His glory—we deprive ourselves of the opportunity of showing love to Christ. One Church built or endowed at our own cost will rejoice our hearts far more than fifty provided by the plunder of our Cathedrals; for the one is a monument of love, the other of niggard selfishness. ”

“ For moral miracles the time is never past. Neither is it a new or unexampled work of grace for which we ask: we have but to pray with the prophet, "Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord! awake as in the ancient days, in the generations of old;" for our faith and hope have the encouragement of experience, the experience of ages, to the power of the grace of God. ”

“ Do not the rich throng our churches and our public meetings? Are they not amiable, kindhearted, and liberal? Is not a profession of religion very widely spread among them? and do we not generally find among them such a knowledge of the Gospel of Christ, that when we speak in common language of "the religious world," we mean almost exclusively certain portions of the middle and higher classes? All this is unquestionable, and, yet our Lord's words cannot be made void. "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." ”

“ Thus did church architecture arise, and thus was it perfected. Men knew that they were building, not for man, but for the glory of His name, who had furnished for them this spacious earth in its beauty and abundance, and who was gone to prepare for them mansions in heaven; and therefore none could endure that their work should yield in magnificence to that of another. Nation vied with nation, city with city ”

“ These are devices to effect the great results which are the natural fruit of genuine self-denying Christian beneficence, by means of our meagre and niggard rule of giving that which we shall never miss. As if to ensure the absence of self-denial, and to poison more thoroughly the very fountains of charity, we must be bribed to give to God even that which we do not want. We have ceased to give for the love of Christ, that we may learn, even in devoting our substance to His Church and to the poor, to be influenced by the love of worldly pleasure. ”

“ That which we have given for Christ's sake they will have still, and one way or other, they shall abundantly enjoy it. And surely even the experience of the world will confirm the promise of God; if our faith be too weak to receive it on His word. When were the children of a bountiful man the worse for his bounty? He may leave them less of this world's good; but is it not seen that God's hand waits to prosper them, and watches over them for good? They are advanced, no man can tell why. An invisible charm works for them, and men in their blindness wonder at their good fortune. ”

“ Who can estimate the dignity with which Religion might then raise her head; or the blessings which might be called down on our Church and nation by the continual prayers of thousands who are now aliens from God, "sitting in darkness and the shadow of death." Surely we might expect that the very face of our land would wear a brightness hitherto unknown. Even the secular and worldly condition of our poor would be changed. ”

“ The form of our government makes the judgment and opinion of every body of men, to a certain degree, influential upon the governing power—upon the nation itself. The politicians of this world may speak of the power and influence thus conferred on every one of us as a political right. To the eye of a Christian, it bears a more high and solemn character—as one of the talents committed to his stewardship. ”

“ God and Mammon we cannot serve. Long ago we were warned of the impossibility; and now the choice is offered to us whom we will serve; whether we will make our nation an excellency upon the earth, a joy of many generations; by taking God at His word, receiving in faith what He has spoken, and giving liberally to Him of our worldly substance; or whether we will cast His words behind us, and trust to our silver and gold for our private and national prosperity. ”

“ And why should we judge of more ancient foundations by a different rule? Men gave their lands, as they declared in the deed of gift, "for the glory of God," and they charged what they so gave with the maintenance of masses: if reformation had been desired, this condition would have been repealed; but this would not have gorged that fatal covetousness which, by confiscating the endowments, ran headlong into the guilt of sacrilege. ”

“ The bishops of the English Church, with the co-operation of the clergy and laity, have full power to put them into immediate operation. We require no legislative authority; we need wait for no political change. We want only Christian liberality and self-denial, with a spirit of unity and order. And how might the moral condition of our land be changed. Our parochial system once restored to efficiency, the Church would arise like one raised up from a seizure of paralysis, whose every limb is once more instinct with life and energy. ”

“ It is not for the sake of economy, nor even from hatred to the Church, that nothing has yet been done by the parliament of England, for those of our poor who are destitute of all things needful for their souls. That parliament has granted twenty millions for the emancipation of the West Indian slaves; at this hour it is voting an indefinite sum, without enquiring into its amount, to indemnify those who lost by a Danish war; and in like manner will it vote sums as large or larger, to rescue our land from becoming heathen, when the voice of the nation shall require them. ”

“ In these things is our hidden strength; in them is the source and spring, though not the whole course of a Christian life. To action, indeed, they must continually lead, or they will degenerate into a morbid, dreaming religion, transplanting to holy ground the sickly plants of a romantic imagination. Our love to our Lord, if it be untried and unpractical, will become as unreal as our interest in some imaginary character of poetical fiction. ”

“ Knowing nothing of civilization, but the heavy pressure of its laws and restrictions; of property, nothing but the invidious fences which ward off their intrusions on that of others; of religion, nothing but a dark and gloomy dread of something beyond the grave. And on what hope do they lean, among the sorrows and anxieties of "life, which to every one that breathes is full of care," and to none more than to them? or how do they appease that restless and eager craving after "some good [10] ", which the Creator has implanted in man to attract him to Himself? ”

“ Let us not be deterred then, by any fear of obloquy, or by respect for any name however venerable, from opposing with our whole power and influence measures so hateful to the God of truth and equity, and so fatal to the very object which they are intended to promote. If we keep silence when they are proposed and maintained, then do we no doubt bring upon ourselves a portion of that awful responsibility which belongs chiefly to their authors. ”

“ His pervading influence is to hallow every joy and sorrow of their lives; he is to bless every wedded pair, to receive every infant into the communion of the Church, to superintend the religious education of every child within his bounds, to attend and minister at every sick bed, and finally to commit to rest in the church's shade the mortal remains of every member of her holy brotherhood. ”

“ He has brought us, in safety and with victory, through a war more tremendous than any which our forefathers have known. England is the only nation of Europe which, during the course of that war, escaped the ravages of invading armies; London the only capital which was occupied by no hostile force: and shall we, in return for these mercies, leave London any longer an half heathen city, and abandon without a struggle whole districts of England to the great enemy of God and man? ”

“ Societies, as we have seen, are to the poor a great blessing: they afford to them the same opportunities of self-denial which are furnished to the rich by great and splendid works. They have moreover an important function of their own, in that they encourage great undertakings, by preventing that sense of hopelessness which often withholds men's hands. Thus, church-building societies occasion the erection of many churches, to which they often contribute no large proportion. ”

“ We have discovered that in time of persecution, riches were a continual snare and temptation to apostasy, and that with the danger from Jews and heathens, the danger of riches too is gone by, and the need of forsaking them:—as if riches were less likely to produce worldliness of heart in a time of peace, than open apostasy in days of danger; as if at this very hour there were not thousands among us, who worship gold with an idolatry as gross as that of the most wretched apostate that ever bowed down to the gods of the nations; only the modern idolater is in danger far more imminent ”

“ Surely when both are presented to our view, there is something in the charity of the world so poor and mean and contemptible, and something in the law of Christ so noble and pure and exalted, that our hearts cannot but burn within us, with an earnest longing to cast in our lot with Him, to be partakers with Him in His sorrow and His joy, in His poverty and in His glory. ”